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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

> Isn't this a bit anti competitive and alarming?

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by laziness.

(Variation on Hanlon's razor)

Well according to st3fan, "If you change the User Agent to Chrome you can see that it works pretty well on Firefox actually." That means that they removed features on firefox on purpuse right? Or does that just mean they implemented their feature "for chrome only", checking the user agent to make sure it works on chrome only?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20489237

Oftentimes a team at Google doesn't have the QA resources to test configuration X. In that case to avoid a potentially bad experience, feature Y is often gated to tested configs and and disabled for X, leaving X with the old experience since it had been tested on X.

Why does QA test only Chrome? Well if there is only enough QA time to test one browser, imagine having to be the guy to explain to the higher ups why it wasn't chrome.

I find it surprising that an organization the size of Google doesn't have the resources to test key features in such a notable browser.

Though I just searched and it seems Firefox has a shockingly low market share in mobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Perhaps that's why it's not given the attention it needs, how unfortunate.

Bingo, Firefox mobile has << 1% of the mobile browser user base. It's hard to justify the resources to test every change and feature to ensure a good user experience for such a small number of users.

And the reason for this is probably that Chrome comes bundled with Android.

Agreed, and this is likely the entire reason for Android to exist: more searches

Google search is similarly hobbled on desktop Firefox. It looks terrible.

Google employs over 100,000 people. They have the resources to test configuration X.

That's not how big organizations work. Having 100,000 people doesn't translate to having proportionally as many people with skills to do testing and QA. Human resources are not really that fluid.

I'd wager $1 that if the order came down from @sundarpichai to test in a particular browser, it would happen within hours not days. They have the resources.

This logic leads one to conclude corporations are almost never malicious - they're just too lazy/frugal to test features on competing browsers/support patent-free filesystems/follow fire-safety codes/test aircraft electronics/recall HIV-tainted blood.

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